Health Care Economics

Drug costs surpass spending on physicians

For the first time ever in Canada, spending on prescription and nonprescription drugs surpassed the cost of physician services. The Canadian Institute for Health Information reports that drug costs have grown from 8.4% of total expenditures in the late 1970s to 14.5% in 1997. Meanwhile, spending for physician services decreased from a high of 15.6% of the total in 1987, to 14.2% a decade later. Drug costs now rank behind only hospital expenditures in terms of share of health care spending. CMAJ 2000;162(3):405.

Equity and health

The evidence of a direct, almost linear, relation between health and wealth is mounting, yet the precise mechanisms by which social inequities produce health inequities are unclear. Dr. Barbara Starfield of Johns Hopkins University announces the formation of the International Society for Equity in Health, whose purpose will be to encourage advances in knowledge about equity and health and to promote the application of knowledge to activities directed at this goal. The society's inaugural meeting was held in June in Havana, Cuba. CMAJ 2000;162(3):346.

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